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Download fileEstablishing the boundaries: the hippocampal contribution to imagining scenes
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-07, 18:12 authored by Chris BirdChris Bird, Corinne Capponi, John A King, Christian F Doeller, Neil BurgessWhen we visualize scenes, either from our own past or invented, we impose a viewpoint for our “mind's eye” and we experience the resulting image as spatially coherent from that viewpoint. The hippocampus has been implicated in this process, but its precise contribution is unknown. We tested a specific hypothesis based on the spatial firing properties of neurons in the hippocampal formation of rats, that this region supports the construction of spatially coherent mental images by representing the locations of the environmental boundaries surrounding our viewpoint. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we show that hippocampal activation increases parametrically with the number of enclosing boundaries in the imagined scene. In contrast, hippocampal activity is not modulated by a nonspatial manipulation of scene complexity nor to increasing difficulty of imagining the scenes in general. Our findings identify a specific computational role for the hippocampus in mental imagery and episodic recollection.
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Published version
Journal
Journal of NeuroscienceISSN
1529-2401Publisher
Society for NeuroscienceExternal DOI
Issue
35Volume
30Page range
11688-11695Department affiliated with
- Psychology Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes